Doom: Sons of Perdition
by messangerofgrief
Summary: 85 years after the events of Doom 3, the UAC has resurfaced and set forth a new plan to wreak Hell upon us. -First attempt at Fan Fiction, feedback would be appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

Doom: Sons of Perdition

General Stone sighed in resignation. He had not wanted to give in to the bizarre ransom offered by Union Aerospace Corporation Director Lance Sparks. However, based on the camera and audio feeds he was receiving from soldiers assigned to his first battalion, the price in blood to retake the colonization on Mars by force would be too high. The shrieks of hundreds of dying soldiers blended with gunfire, explosions, and otherworldly battle cries to make the control room itself seem like it was being consumed in the fires of Hell. Stone folded his arms sullenly, he didn't bother turning around, he knew that his various operators and officers seated at terminals behind him would be staring at him longingly for orders to shut off the feed, to end the sounds of madness encircling them. But Stone didn't feel like catering to anyone else's emotional desires. There was no relief from this kind of thing. He had sent 500 marines to their deaths, their screams of horror only echoed the ones in his own heart.

In Stone's mind, that knowledge alone eclipsed the terrible confirmation of the supernatural foes his troops faced inside the Mars Colony. While few knew the truth behind the UAC's legendary collapse in 2145, Stone was among the privileged. He'd read all the files, seen all the reports. But the truth was kept from the public. The cover up stories themselves were wildly inconsistent, everything from terrorist bombings of the base to the accidental triggering of an underground fault had been attributed to the catastrophe. But none of that could explain the complete lack of survivors, save for the one marine who was extracted from the wreckage.

But the public had lost interest in the nature of the tragedy, the fact was that globally 70 trillion dollars had been invested in UAC research. The economic consequences of the collapse had been more frightening to some then any sort of disaster that could account for the loss of that much human life. Society was crippled so profoundly by the greatest economic crisis in the history of mankind that governments were forced to pool together enormous bailouts to revive the UAC, and against their better judgments, allow it to draw up plans to re-colonize Mars only 20 years after the forces of Hell had torn it asunder.

When construction started in 2172, excitement over the project was palpable in nearly every city on Earth. This time the base wouldn't merely be a haven for the UAC's scientific research. It would also serve as a countermeasure against overpopulation, the ultimate plan to resettle millions of civilians in a sustainable Martian society. The Americans, British, and Russian governments set up a democratic governing body to pass laws over the colony and police the UAC. The Space Marines were no longer merely guns for hire, but were now contracted as the primary military force on Mars, though in what would prove to be a massive folly they kept the bulk of their assets in a space station four days away from the red planet. In 2225 the colony was officially opened, with 40,000 settlers arriving to start new lives within the new governmental system. But it had only taken five years for the plan to go awry. UAC Director Lance Sparks had methodically usurped power and cut off both the Space Marines and nearly all communication to Earth as he had launched a carefully planned fear campaign against the new government and eventually gained unchecked power over the colony. Plans to shuttle in more settlers were indefinitely delayed, and the new Martian colonization project quickly turned into a disaster.

General Stone was one of only a handful of people who realized that Sparks' ambitions were likely far more dangerous than mere conquest. As the Marines prepared to assault the colony as a last contingency to restore order, the nagging fear that Sparks had somehow become involved with the long abandoned research of the late Malcolm Betruger became prevalent. This was supported by Sparks' strange offer for peace and now confirmed by the sights and sounds coming from the wired battalion who faced indescribable horrors within the Martian settlement. It was nothing short of a massacre, even with a well planned assault which was supposed to insert the five companies, only a fraction of Stone's available force, to do little more than set up surveillance and establish a small, hidden presence within the massive compound. Within an hour the entire battalion was ambushed, and they never stood a chance against the dominant supernatural warriors inhabiting the colony. The fact became obvious that, as the battalion had traversed a mere 0.1% of the massive Martian installation, even if Stone had sent in all 20,000 men for the attack, the results wouldn't have been any different. The fight would have lasted longer, perhaps, but no volume of marines could ultimately repel the onslaught his men faced.

Stone looked down to see a blinking red light signaling an incoming call to his personal communication device. Finally, to the visible relief of everyone present, General Stone signaled for the audio and visual feed to be cut off. He sat down in his command chair and put on a headset.

"General Stone speaking," he spoke quietly, not wanting the conversation to be overheard by his subordinates.

"My offer still stands," Lance Sparks' hissy voice resounded with a stinging triumph, "as long as he's still alive, I will gladly make the exchange."

"And all 40,000 residents will be safely handed over?" Stone couldn't believe he was seriously considering the offer.

"I have 27,859 to be exact," Sparks responded.

"We had more than that. I know that 40,000 made the trip five years ago, and with the birth rate…"

"Please understand, General, survival rates have been less than ideal amidst all the confusion we've endured here," Sparks spoke with a methodical, diabolical calmness that asserted a sort of dominance that made Stone cringe.

"Alright, fine!" Stone conceded indignantly, "we exchange him for 27,859 civilians. Then we hear nothing else from you. You don't contact us. You perform your sick experiments with no consequences to life on Earth, correct?"

"You have my word," the UAC Director assured him. Not that that meant much, but the leverage seemed to favor Director Sparks, and though odd, the exchange would be more than fair if it went smoothly.

"Fine, we make the exchange," Stone said coldly, "how do you suggest we proceed?"

Corporal Eli Blackfield was well known for his ominous nature. Though the slim, 25 year old marine wasn't rude or outspoken, in between his neatly combed hair and short, black stubble were dark eyes that darted around cynically, silently penetrating any object that caught their gaze. Within the enormous frigate known as the Cronos iii, which was something between a military vessel and a behemoth mass transport, the marines were restless, anxiously waiting for a long overdue status report of their 500 dispatched comrades.

The benefit of traveling in a ship as spacious as the Cronos iii was that there was never really a sense of containment, the accommodations were very similar to being stationed at a fully equipped military base. Corporal Blackfield sat in one of the ships many recreation rooms, a solitary observer of his fellow marines as they played pool, table tennis, cards, and many other activities available to them while they waited. The competition within the room seemed more intense than usual, which Eli attributed to the heightened sense of apprehension over the crisis whose nature was largely unknown, at least to the common soldiers. Rarely did the troops feel so intentionally kept in the dark about an operation, and the fact that there was still no information on the first battalion only added to their restlessness.

For his part, Eli felt relatively calm. He wasn't easily shaken by fear of unknown dangers, or anything for that matter. He had a natural distrust for authority, but preferred to accept it as a part of life rather than challenge it in some blind and foolish attempt to establish a better system. Still, he didn't want to be anyone's fool, but being that death didn't seem all that scary, the ambiguous situation regarding the assault on Mars caused him nothing more than minor annoyance.

Presently Blackfield heard a chirping sound coming from his belt. His personal communicator. Space Marines, like uncultured sea pirates, were notorious for their lack of military discipline off of the battlefield. In combat, they generally performed their duties professionally and without complaint, but keeping them organized and alert could be a major headache. The only "rule" during their downtime was the requirement to keep their personal communicators within arms reach at all times. These devices couldn't be used like cell phones for private conversation, they were exclusively reserved for officers to issue orders or soldiers to report emergencies.

Corporal Blackfield stepped out of the room into a vacant hallway and turned his receiver on.

"Blackfield here."

"Eli? It's Tsu," Sergeant Tsu was one of Blackfield's closest friends in the Marine Corps, "I need you to grab your equipment and report to shuttle bay B-14 ASAP. We're going in."

"What about the first battalion?" Blackfield asked, "have we heard anything?"

"Command says the operation is going according to plan," responded Tsu, "first battalion's doing their job, now we have to do ours."

"Then why the hell haven't we heard anything?" Blackfield wasn't convinced, "Stone knows these guys don't like to be left waiting. When's he planning on giving an official update?"

"I'm only relaying what I've been told, Eli," Tsu answered, "if they say the operation is going according to plan, then it's going according to plan. If they give me an objective, I don't ask why or consider moral consequences."

_Moral consequences? How the hell did that come up? An uneasy feeling crept over Corporal Blackfield for the first time. General Stone not wanting to disclose the mission status was slightly unusual, but not bothersome, but when one of his best friends starts making cryptic and unusual statements, then something is definitely amiss._

"_Can you at least tell me who we're fighting," Blackfield pressed on._

"_Sparks has organized a large civilian militia, apparently," Tsu told him, "the guy's got to be a charismatic genius though to convince so many people to trust the UAC over the Space Marines or the Martian government, which as far as I can tell no longer exists. But cutting down some hastily trained civilian militants shouldn't prove too problematic. Remember Eli, hangar B-14, ASAP." And with that Tsu disconnected._

_Blackfield muttered under his breath and hastened toward his quarters to get his equipment._

_Hangar B-14 housed hundreds of small, short range shuttles used for troop deployment. Unlike most of the other types of aircraft stored on board the Cronos iii, B-14's shuttles carried no exterior weaponry and had a personnel limit of 12 men per shuttle. Blackfield couldn't remember the actual name of the shuttles, but they had been nicknamed "bargain buggies" by the Space Marines because their lack of any desirable specialization caused many to conclude they were only in production because they were cheap to manufacture._

_As Blackfield walked through the hangar he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. While there was plenty of bustle around him as shuttles were being prepped and crews assembled, there was something intangible about it that made it all seem artificial. Like it was a drill or something. The Corporal found Sergeant Tsu waiting for him near the far end of the concrete runway. Ten other marines were already assembled behind him, some of which he recognized but was not acquainted with._

"_Well, well, Eli," Tsu was horrible at trying to sound strict or authoritative, "you're the last one here, you know what that means. You get to take point during the operation."_

"_What can I say?" Blackfield shrugged, "my cabin's a long way from the nearest rec room."_

"_Alright people," Tsu raised his voice to address the crew, "the Martian complex we're assaulting is huge, makes the Cronos look like a peanut. This place was designed to accommodate millions of settlers, but only 40,000 plus are on site. That means the majority of the complex is going to be a ghost town. We should be able to mop up the enemy like a turd smeared on a kitchen floor once we find them, but since we have no clue where they are Command is sending us out in small groups to recon the area and find enemy positions. We're being assigned to a presumably deserted apartment area on the eastern side of the complex. Our mission is to search for enemy positions, we are not to engage unless it is absolutely necessary. Any questions?"_

_The collective blankness on the faces of the soldiers surrounding Tsu gave him the answer. "Okay, everybody board."_

"_A turd smeared on a kitchen floor?" Blackfield whispered to his friend as they boarded, "you need to hire a speech writer to help with your briefings, man, that's pathetic."_

_Corporal Blackfield chuckled and slapped Tsu on the shoulder. The reaction on his friend's generally good humored face was troubling, however. Tsu didn't respond verbally, and was clearly holding something in. It appeared as if he was simultaneously suppressing a smirk and fighting back tears. Blackfield wanted to confront him about it, but he was so baffled that appropriate words never found his lips, and he ended up shuffling by and taking his seat in silence._

_The fifteen minute trip in the shuttle was awkward. Blackfield normally was amused by awkwardness, he enjoyed listening to marines who felt the necessity to break awkward silence with silly pleasantries or stupid observations. But this was different. The Corporal looked over at his friend, who had sat at the opposite corner of the cramped shuttle, and saw a look of sheer dejection, his eyes empty as if his thoughts had receded too far back into his skull to be palpable. Considering most soldiers, even seasoned ones, showed at least slight signs of anticipation and adrenaline right before combat, Tsu's lost, somber look was quite spooky. The other soldiers were fidgeting with their weapons, checking their ammo, making sure all the buckles on their armor were secure, and other nervous habits marines were prone to on the brink of action._

_Eventually the shuttle reached the airlock closest to the squad's designated area. The marines heads bobbled in unison as it jerked into position, and as soon as the hiss of the airlock had subsided and the shuttle doors opened, Sergeant Tsu sprang to life exiting the craft and motioning for the troops to follow him._

_Corporal Blackfield found himself in an enormous lobby which instilled a sense of déjà vu as if he was back on Earth in a fancy hotel. Even though it was quite apparent that the lobby was abandoned, the twelve soldiers reacted instinctively to the undesirable position of being forced into an open area by immediately aiming down the sights of their assault rifles and scanning the room for any signs of movement while identifying potential areas to seek cover if they were fired upon. But the area, dimly lit by weak but mysteriously functional wall mounted lights, greeted them with nothing but silence. One by one their weapons lowered and they took in their surroundings more subjectively. One of the marines shouted "Clear!" out of procedural obligation, but it was an unnecessary gesture._

"_Okay," Tsu said after an intermediate pause, "Eli, remember, you're the point man. Let's sweep the surrounding hallways starting with the first floor."_

_Each floor of the lobby had entryways that formed semicircles around the exterior and presumably followed through to the openings on the opposite side. Blackfield lifted his gun once again to eye-level and started circling counter clockwise through the first floor hallway. _

_The corridor was extremely narrow, the mounted wall lights flickering and faint, but providing just enough illumination to make the hallway navigable without the employment of "shoot me I'm right here" flashlights. Tattered wallpaper that was once red and marble flooring that was once white blended together into a lifeless brown under a coating of Martian dust. The outside wall had doors with numbered plaques at steady intervals, entries into the likely never inhabited apartments. Blackfield slowly followed the semi circle around until something brought him to a screeching halt. One of the apartment doors was opened just a crack, with a much brighter illumination spilling out and forming a cone around it. Blackfield's heart fluttered momentarily, something else that gave him pause. He never got ancy during missions, whether in the heat of combat or the suspense of the hunt. He realized that it was the surprising coincidence that made him uneasy. Everything, the lack of a status report from the first battalion, the subtle absence of urgency in the hangar, Tsu's bizarre behavior, and now, searching an area with miles and miles of extremely sparsely populated terrain, the luck of finding something suspicious within the first ten minutes; it all seemed wrong. It all compiled into a bundle of mystery so profound that even Corporal Blackfield, the ever stoic, ever suspicious Space Marine was impacted._

"_Okay, Eli," Tsu nudged him from behind, causing Blackfield to force himself slowly forward. He placed his back against the wall inches from the door from which the light was emitted. He pressed his ear to the corroded wallpaper but heard nothing. He strained to see through the opening, but it was too narrow. There was only one option left._

_With a sudden surge of energy Blackfield tore open the door and burst into the room, his eye tight against the sights of his assault rifle as he swept his weapon from side to side to cover every angle of the visible interior._

"_What the hell?" he heard himself say._

_While there was no sign of movement, the bare room which he found himself in was coated with streaks of fresh looking black paint. While the stripes across the floor and side walls seemed random and meaningless, on the far wall a giant but crude pentagram stared him down. Still at the alert he slowly approached it: bold and dripping with sludgy paint, an omen of the evil to come. Suddenly Blackfield felt a sharp sting in the back of his neck. Instinctively he reached back and pulled out a grey metallic object. He recognized it. A tranquilizer dart, the kind Space Marines used for non lethal detainment. He swung around, his surroundings already starting to swim around him dizzily as he felt the poison work itself through his veins. The perpetrator stood before him, the tranquilizer pistol slowly being lowered by the assailant. It was Tsu._

"_Tsu! You treacherous bastard!" Blackfield tried to lunge forward and attack his betrayer, but his limbs simply wouldn't yield to his commands. He heard the clatter of his rifle hitting the floor, though he hadn't even felt himself drop it. "Why?" he cried desperately, his voice fading with every syllable, "you.. Stupid.. Bastard… Why?"_

_Though his vision was nothing more than a spinning kaleidoscope of blurry colors, he could hear the tearfulness in Tsu's voice. "I didn't want to, bro, I swear," he pleaded, "I'm sorry, Eli, please forgive me."_

_The world suddenly turned black, and the last sound Eli Blackfield heard before losing consciousness was that of his own body striking the floor._

_What seemed like an eternity of nightmares tore through Eli's mind while he slept. Darkness. The swelling darkness, a sea of eternal black, burning the skin from his bones, turning his bones to ash, incinerating his entire physical being with black fire. And yet even without a body he remained. Choking, suffocating in darkness. Unable to scream, unable to move._

_When Eli Blackfield woke up he found himself fastened to an operating table. The table was tilted up to an almost 90 degree angle, but even in his sedated state, the steel clasps around his wrists and ankles held him upright, tightly secured against the coffin sized metallic slab. His equipment was gone: his body armor, his weapons, his communication devices. His pants were still in place, thank goodness, though they felt strange without a belt or the usual accoutrements, and his black, skin tight thermal undershirt remained as well, although one of the sleeves had been torn off._

_The room he was in was bathed in an eerily bright light that seemed to make everything glow. It was a painfully stark contrast to the blackness he'd been swimming in during his dreams. Suddenly, as if in answer to his visible discomfort over the blinding light, the power went out with a snap, casting his surroundings in a dark but comfortable evening shadow. The humming machinery around him groaned as it hastily settled into dormancy. The next sound he heard was the clacking of an automatic door being forced open. Through it emerged an attractive yet disheveled young female holding a duffel bag. She approached him with a "jumping at shadows" sort of nervousness, darting glances at inanimate objects and bare corners as if afraid something might be lurking behind the wash basin or perhaps the bundle of electrical wire. Eli was surprised she didn't peek inside his pockets for signs of ghosts._

"_We have to hurry, we don't have much time," she dropped to one knee and dove into her duffel bag, flinging her long, curly hair past Eli's face just long enough for him to catch a whiff._

"_That's that Pure Essence shampoo, isn't it?" he asked her, though his voice was coming out sharp and perhaps a little spiteful, an interesting contradiction, "good stuff."_

"_I'm sorry, Corporal Blackfield, but I really don't have time to flirt right now," she sounded very professional, but he could almost hear her heart thumping with terror._

"_It's always a good idea to wash your hair a couple times before going on your Martian espionage mission, don't you think?" Eli continued sarcastically as the young woman inserted a small key into the steel shackles around his wrists and ankles, freeing him one limb at a time._

"_You surprise me a little Corporal," she told him, "I would think that the first things you'd want to know are where you are, who I am, and what's going on." As she undid the last clasp Eli attempted to stand under his own power, but was seized by a sudden nausea and almost collapsed to the floor. He leaned back against the table for relief, panting and suddenly aware of a cold anemia. "Be careful, just a second," she ordered and removed an I.V. from his left arm that he hadn't even been aware of._

"_At any rate," he continued the conversation, "I don't really care where I am or what's going on. All my friends and everyone important has betrayed and forsaken me. I have nothing to live or die for, and you know what? There's nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose."_

"_Be careful," she warned him, "in this place, on the very shores of Hell, you have everything to lose."_

_Eli gave her a puzzled look. "Okay, fine," he relented, "tell me what the hell is going on."_

"_Listen," she looked him in the eye for the first time, "power outages are a common occurrence here, but if this grid stays offline for long enough someone is bound to investigate. I don't have time to give you all the details right now. My name is Emma Bradley. I'm part of a very small underground movement trying to sabotage Director Sparks' plan to open the Hell Mouth. Sparks is paranoid, he needed your blood to open the Hell Mouth, but he took a dangerous amount so he'd have extra just in case his plan didn't work the first time. And then as an extra, extra precaution he left you alive for now, because if you died your blood would be useless to him."_

"_What's so special about my blood?" Eli asked._

"_I don't have time to explain that now," Emma reached back into her duffel bag, "here, I got you some things: boots, they're not yours but hopefully they fit," she removed a crusty pair of brown work boots from the bag, "here's a pistol, 9mm, fully equipped. I know it's not ideal for combat but it's the best I could do," she handed him the weapon._

_Eli, though still weakened, was now able to stand on his own. The boots were a bit too tight but wearable. He examined the handgun, checking the magazine and testing the slide._

"_And take this too," she handed him an object wrapped in brown paper._

"_What is it?" he lifted it up and down, testing its weight._

"_It's a sandwich," Emma said, "you lost a lot of blood, it'll help you regain your strength a little faster."_

_Immediately upon hearing that he tore through the paper and began stuffing his face. It was stale, it was dry, but it was much better than the cooked vomit they served on the Cronos iii._

"_Okay, this is where it gets tricky," Emma led him to a hatch labeled "waste."_

"_This is the quickest way out," she explained, "you're going to need to squirrel out of the second opening you see down the hatch. You'll arrive at an underground maintenance area. Follow the catwalk straight for about two miles. Don't turn. You'll hopefully be able to rendezvous with Forrest, he'll be waiting there. He'll have more information for you, now go."_

_Eli climbed into the waste chute without complaint; though it wasn't the most glamorous escape route, he didn't feel like begging the girl to sneak him out another way._

"_Oh, and Corporal," she said finally, "don't let yourself drop to the bottom or you'll be swimming in a river of toxic waste. Good luck."_

"_I might owe you a 'thank you'," Eli told her, "but I want to wait on that to make sure you're not sending me toward an even more horrible death." With that Corporal Blackfield began to shimmy his way down the waste chute, wondering what was going on with his blood and this Hell Mouth, but more importantly to him, wondering if perhaps fate would grant him a chance at revenge against General Stone. That would indeed be something worth living for._


	2. Chapter 2

Following Emma's instructions, Eli scooted down the fowl smelling chute and wriggled through the second opening. As he dropped, his boots banged heavily against the metallic catwalk. Even without the aid of sentient life, the maintenance floor was able to create a sense of havoc on its own. The loud buzzing and grinding of unrecognizable machinery created an overpowering dissonance that rivaled the sound level of having one's ear pressed against an amplifier at a heavy metal concert. Flashes of red and yellow lights illuminated the pathway at intervals, apparently emitted from the various generators and motors lining either side of the catwalk. Everything that eluded their paths remained in deep shadow, rendering 90% of the area invisible.

Eli slowly started forward, clenching his handgun with both hands. Had the receipt of the weapon been merely a precautionary measure against Lance Sparks and his cronies? Or was it a direct implication that the girl had been sending him into imminent danger? Damn, this maintenance area was the least ideal setting for identifying potential threats that Eli could possibly imagine. It was a maze of flickering lights and fluttering shadows, all beneath a shroud of deafening banging and humming.

Eli tried to stay alert as he trudged along, although he was frustrated by the fact that, however small the feasibility of him being attacked in such an area may be, there was absolutely nothing he could do to fully orient himself with the cause of every subtle change in his environment. And after all, after Tsu had stabbed him in the back like a Judas, was it all that inconceivable that Emma had led him into a trap by sending him to what had to be the easiest place in history to catch someone off guard? He snarled as he doubled his efforts to take in his surroundings. Hell if he was going to be made to look like such a fool again.

The catwalk was fairly narrow, though it would periodically branch off with either an intersection or an entrance to a supply closet or small office. Following Emma's instructions, Eli avoided navigating off the catwalk on which he had landed. His new contact was apparently two miles from the trash chute. Geez. The area was enormously vast, and had an eerie sense of life despite the apparent lack of biological inhabitation.

Eli's impression on the latter assumption was changed rather abruptly when a garbled whispering seemed to surround him on all sides. He looked around, spotting no logical origin for the sound, which teasingly shifted around him so it was always just behind him, out of sight. Corporal Blackfield now became intensely aware that something wasn't right. It didn't particularly surprise him, it seemed like he'd become a magnet for bad circumstance, but he was determined to find out what the hell was going on before he fell into another trap. This time he would overcome.

It was then that an unusual shadow seemed to leap down a metallic staircase about twenty yards ahead of him. Though the area was rife with unusual shadows, he instinctively felt that this one had been slightly out of sync with its surroundings. He cautiously approached the staircase, which led down into a large storeroom to his left. At the top of the landing he noticed a dark streak which ran down the steps as if some leaking object had been dragged down into the room. The erratic flashes of light on which he relied for visibility made it difficult to tell what the substance was, so he knelt down and rubbed it with his fingers, then smelled it. Fresh blood. Eli chuckled at the perfectly disturbing scenario into which he'd been thrust. If someone was trying to test his sanity he was about to show them a thing or two about messing with Eli Blackfield.

He followed the trail of blood into a spacious room packed with freight containers and shelves of tools. It was cluttered and disorganized. Obviously the most likely deceased maintenance team at the UAC didn't take much pride in their work. Unsurprisingly, the blood trail led him straight to a human body, it's features mostly indistinguishable in the darkness, but certainly dead. An object was held in its right hand, which, upon closer investigation, was clearly a flashlight. Eli seized it immediately, although he had to wrestle it out of the cadaver's hand, which was in a state of rigor-mortis, corroborating the impression given by the fresh blood that this person had not been dead for more than a few hours.

Finally, after brutally cracking and breaking the fingers of the dead man to relieve him of the flashlight, Eli flicked the switch, almost praying that it would work. A white beam of light immediately penetrated the shadows before him. His first observation was that his generous benefactor had suffered quite a grisly demise: the head had been beaten in so thoroughly that no facial features remained, just a red smear, and enormous claw marks shredded the chest and legs of the unfortunate bastard.

As Eli tried to piece together what could have caused such mutilation, he heard a growl rumbling directly behind him. Enter the adrenaline. He whirled around just in time to shine his light on a bizarre, humanoid figure, crouching like a stalking cat. The creature pounced toward him, barely giving him time to duck out of the way. Though a claw caught his shoulder and tore through some skin, the wound was rather superficial, and his assailant clumsily crashed into the wall behind him. As it recovered, he had a chance to get a better look at it. It was probably about 6'5, human in shape alone. Its brownish red skin was tightly laced with muscles, it possessed formidable claws on both its hands and its feet, and it had a hunched, stalking posture that was pure animal. As the thing turned to face him once more he noted the lack of external ear flaps and the spider-like arrangement of eyes. In a word: hideous.

In Eli's mind there was only one appropriate method of dealing with ugly, vicious beasties, thus with a scowl on his face he lifted his handgun and unloaded two rounds into the creature's head. A shriek of pain and a spattering of blood later the monster lay prone and motionless on the floor. The word "demon" came to mind as Eli stared at the creature's corpse. Perhaps this was because of Emma's mention of "the shores of Hell" and the "Hell Mouth". Whether the terms were being used literally or figuratively was still unknown. But if an alien species that was native to Mars existed, and had caused the disaster 85 years ago, why wouldn't someone have warned the government about it before re-colonizing Mars? And what was with Sparks needing Eli's blood to open a "Hell Mouth"? Though he was reluctant to admit it, even to himself, Corporal Blackfield was quite curious as to what was going on.

His contemplations were interrupted by a clattering sound behind him. He turned to see a ventilation grating bounce around as it finished its descent from the ceiling, from which it had been knocked loose. It was followed by two more monsters, identical to the one Eli had just slain, each snarling and gnashing their teeth as they dropped only about ten feet away from where Eli stood. Corporal Blackfield put his game face on.

He got off three rounds before the fiends reached him, but not even having bullets buried in their chests slowed the beasts down. One attempted to grab him, but he was able to block the attack, though he lost his firearm in the process. Pushing the monsters away, he slid to the far side of the room, backed against a stack of storage crates and wedged in between a wall and a supply rack. Stupid move, now he was trapped. The monsters seemed to relish his undesirable position, stalking back and forth in no hurry to charge in for the kill. Eli would fight them to the end, but considered himself a dead man.

It was then that fate intervened, and for once, to Eli's benefit. For on the second shelf of the storage rack was a tool called a diamond saw, a glorified chainsaw used for slicing through metal and solid rock. It was an enormous instrument, with two cutting chains attached to 36 inch long guide bars, and cutting teeth as big as those found in the jaws of a great white shark, although much sharper and more durable. Eli grinned as he picked up the giant tool. My how the momentum can change in the blink of an eye.

Unlike his foolish predators, Eli wasted no time in pulling the rip cord and lunging toward the two hapless fiends. It wasn't even fair. Eli didn't feel any pressure against the diamond saw as flaps of demonic skin and shards of bone flew freely through the air. He could feel their blood splatter on his face, and by the time he powered the weapon down, nothing was left of the creatures except scraggly lumps of shredded meat. It felt barbaric, primitive, even wrong to savor such a gruesome deed, but considering all the anger and darkness Eli Blackfield felt after being abandoned by those closest to him, he allowed himself to take pleasure in mutilating a couple of demon beasts. In a fit of manic rage, he even went back to the monster he had shot, whose body was pretty much intact, and ran the diamond saw through it as well, once again causing a shower of gore to splatter against the walls and himself.

He had told himself that nothing could make him lose his sanity, yet he felt like a psychopath at that moment, a sick, irate freak with a thirst for carnage. The calm and cool apathy that he prided himself over was quickly crumbling before his very eyes. He almost wanted more creatures to attack, but after a few minutes his adrenaline cooled off ever so slightly, and he regained the will to move forward and find this man named "Forrest" Emma had spoke of, and unravel the mystery.

Retrieving his handgun and sliding the barrel into his pants, he continued along the catwalk clutching the diamond saw daringly, its shimmering silver reflecting brilliantly off the flashing lights in the maintenance bay, with parts of it blotted out by dark streaks of blood. As he journeyed forward, Eli felt a new type of stoicism. One that was completely able to negate the unpredictability of his surroundings, one that was unmoved by thoughts of human suffering and death. It didn't feel like a mere survival instinct, however, it felt decidedly darker.

Presently he saw a human shaped shadow standing in front of an entrance to a large security checkpoint branching off from the catwalk. He quickly reached for his flashlight and shone it on the figure, which guarded its eyes from the glare. It was a human alright, a tall, thick black guy decked out in a full suit of body armor. He exhibited no signs of hostility.

"Are you human?" the man demanded.

"Not anymore," Eli answered darkly.

"Are you Eli Blackfield?"

"I believe I've lost my name somewhere in the past day or so," Eli sneered.

"I-I'm Forrest. Didn't Ms Bradley mention me when she freed you?"

"Freed me? Do you consider sending a man spiraling into a mad abyss 'freedom'?"

Suddenly Forrest dropped his polite questioning act and grew bitter.

"I don't have time for your cryptic bullcrap, Corporal!" he said, "in your free time maybe you should write a poetry book, but right now we need to get down to business!"

Eli grinned. He enjoyed Forrest's display of attitude. But he wouldn't give in that easily.

"Oh business," he said sarcastically, "that's what you're calling this mess left behind by Sparks. Although I suppose he shares the sentiment that it's all 'business'. After all, he found a way to get my best friend to betray me so he could steal my blood. It's like the mafia says after they send an associate to the bottom of the ocean, 'it's just business'."

"If your finished pouting Corporal, then I suggest we step into the security terminal where it's safer" Forrest was pure stone. Very impressive.

"Safer? You mean it's dangerous out here? Oh dear, I had no idea, we'd better get to where it's safer."

With a sigh of frustration Forrest made an exasperated beckoning motion and disappeared into the adjacent room. Blackfield grinned as he followed him.

"Now I'll make you a deal," Forrest said after the two had entered the room, "if you stop acting like an asshole, I'll tell you what's going on."

"Fine," Eli responded, "I'm particularly interested in what this mess has to do with me."

"I need to start from the beginning," Forrest said, gesturing toward a seat for Eli to sit down in. Eli glared at him and remained standing.

"Eighty five years ago the UAC's operation on Mars was sabotaged by a man named Malcolm Betruger. I don't know exactly how he did it, but he was somehow able to manipulate teleportation devices into portals that led to Hell."

"Hell?" Eli interrupted him, "you mean literally, Hell, as in fire and brimstone and Satan?"

"Yes," Forrest answered resolutely, "and eventually through a dark ritual he was able to sacrifice his own blood to open a Hell Mouth, a permanent transport to Hell from which there was no return. Well… One Space Marine apparently escaped, but I have no clue how he did it. He was somehow able to trap Betruger in the Hell Mouth and seal it, meaning without a blood sample from Betruger there would be no way to re-open it."

"I don't like where this is going," Blackfield's voice was ice.

"Yeah, you're on the right track," Forrest continued, "the Space Marines destroyed the UAC base and thought that all of Betruger's artifacts and research had been decimated. And after the economic crisis on Earth, Lance Sparks seized the opportunity to re-colonize Mars. Sparks was revered by the UAC because of his genius breakthroughs in bio-engineering. So they made him the Director of UAC operations on Mars. They knew he was a little off his rocker, but he was supposed to be kept in check by the new Martian government."

"So how did he eliminate them?"

"Very methodically," Forrest sighed, "he formed a conspiracy against them, a conspiracy which I was initially involved in. Sparks is very persuasive, he approached individuals such as myself and convinced us that we had no chance of going to Heaven because of our sins. Then he revealed his plan to unleash Hell and rule it, saving us from our inevitable fate. We called ourselves the Sons of Perdition, those who were destined for eternal darkness, and trained to embrace it."

"So what 'sin' did you commit that gave you this conclusion that there was no way for you to avoid Hell," Eli asked cynically.

"I was a problem gambler," Forrest bowed his head in shame.

"Oh, and of course every Dogma assures problem gamblers that there is no way for them to repent and change their ways, so obviously you were headed for Hell," Eli said sarcastically.

"I owed a lot of money to a man and murdered him to relieve myself of the debt," Forrest snarled through clenched teeth, "I believe murder is an unforgivable sin."

Corporal Blackfield smirked and nodded with a hint of mockery.

"Sparks had been planning this for years," Forrest continued, "He was able to find Betruger's lab with a surprising amount of research still intact. This is the part that involves you: Lance Sparks had developed a way to re-create someone's DNA from something as small as a finger print. Just by capturing the oils on someone's skin he could clone them. He didn't have the facilities installed yet on Mars to clone Betruger at that time, and being the impatient bastard that he is, he sent the sample to Earth to have his UAC buddies begin the process right away."

"And the punch line is that I'm a clone of a mad scientist who tried to actually bring Hell to Mars?"

"If it makes you feel any better Malcolm Betruger suffered severe brain damage as an adolescent. He was trapped in a room full of some kind of airborne toxin for over two hours and barely survived. Instead of turning into a retarded vegetable, he became a twisted genius, funny how that works, huh?"

"Hilarious," Eli snarled.

"Look," Forrest said, "now that he's got your blood he can open the Hell Mouth at any time. And when he does, this whole base is going to be infested with demons."

"I believe this whole place is already infested with demons, idiot," Eli said.

Forrest laughed, "no, no. Those are merely clones of the samples he found in Betruger's lab. They're soulless, they have nothing but instinct. They are 'seeded' though, which means when Hell breaks loose, they'll become many times more dangerous. There will be more of them too."

"Seeded?"

"Yeah, it's a way of planting dormant demonic spirits into soulless clones. He was making people that way too, somehow cloning people into drones with only basic skills and no active willpower, and 'seeding' them with evil spirits that will become active once the Hell Mouth opens."

Corporal Blackfield stood silently and attempted to take in all the information he'd just received. The revelation that he was a clone of an evil genius, the explanation of this "seeding" bullcrap, and the confirmation that this was literally Hell being unleashed. It didn't affect him as profoundly as it probably should have. Curious, really. Perhaps it was too much, his senses had been whittled down to practically nil after all the madness he'd already experienced.

His new contact revealed a cache of weapons and armor to him, and told him to choose his loadout and head for an elevator which would carry him back up to an area designated "Delta Labs", from which Sparks was operating. The plan was vague: kill Sparks, close the Hell Mouth, attempt to escape. Blackfield even thought it sounded a little suspicious. But defying it at this point would mean remaining on Mars simply for the sake of not trusting anyone. No, Corporal Blackfield would surely defy the plans of his new "allies" at some point, but it was not time. He first would load up on weapons and go up to Delta Labs to confront Sparks and the "Sons of Perdition". If it was Hell they wanted so bad, Eli surely could fast track them there and save them the trouble of opening a portal. Eli Blackfield smiled at the idea.


End file.
